Landscape

This panoramic mountain landscape is dotted with architectural spaces made for enjoying scenic views. At right, a cluster of buildings shelters a scholar and his servant. Nearby, an empty pavilion offers a view of two waterfalls on the opposite shore. At left, a bridge crosses the river at the point where it is joined by a tributary, and two more scholars’ cottages sit at the base of a ridge.

The model for this imagined Chinese scene was probably a Chinese Ming-dynasty copy of a famous scroll by Huang Gongwang (1296–1354), one of the great literati masters of China’s Yuan dynasty (1271–1368). Kaiseki adopted Huang’s tightly organized structure and repetitive use of round boulders. The long parallel strokes that define the eroded cliff walls may also be an attempt to imitate the Yuan master. Other elements, like the meticulously patterned leaves of the foreground trees, seem to point instead to the lingering influence of woodblock-printed painting manuals in Kaiseki’s work.

Born in Kii province (now called Wakayama prefecture) as the son of a merchant, Kaiseki studied with a pupil of Ike Taiga, then moved to Kyoto and trained directly with Taiga. In 1797, he returned to Kii, where he served as official painter to the lord of the province. This work was composed when he was sixty-five.